In Japan, Fuji mounds make worship easy

In southern Spain, I once saw Catholic supplicants crawling to the hilltop shrine of a saint on blood-shredded knees; in Iran and Afghanistan, Shia Muslims of the more zealous variety flagellate their backs with blades attached to chains, memorializing the agony experienced by the revered Iman Husayn ibn Ali. Hinduism condones physical and mental suffering as a retributive form of karma.

Even in Japan, worship could once be an ordeal. We read of annual fire-walking rituals as tests of spiritual endurance, of marathon monks circumnavigating mountains, and -- perhaps the most extreme form of self-mortification in the name of devotion -- the ancient practice of mummification, in which holy men were lowered into a pit, covered in earth for three years before being exhumed and embalmed.